We often want to fill our days with activities with things we've been putting off like: stitching our curtains because they're too long, cleaning the top of my dusty closet, buying frames for pictures, hanging frames on the wall.
We busy our days up to feel like the day was not wasted. To feel like we are doing a good job and deserve a pat on the back once all is done. A night cap with wine and Netflix is your driving force after a busy day.
But if we install app blockers on our phones and find no one to compare ourselves to, be left with our own devices to figure out problems sans life hacks, and we surrender our sense to the morning sun, staring at the spines of books you've read and books you haven't, you'd be surprised.
You'd be surprised because you feel an unexpected calm. You're not doomed to eternity for not completing your to-do list, for leaving some dishes on the sink (just don't let the mold gROW), for not hanging your frames up the wall.
Spending time in silence is meditative. Spending time looking at nothing but the wall, your coffee table, your shoes haphazardly left by the door allows your mind to truly feel what the word zen means.
And yes, this is not a revolutionary thought.
But sometimes we need this reminder. That we can spend our holy week/spring breaks without a plan, without travelling, and without the need to do something great.
Sitting by yourself in the morning without scrolling is already something great. Allowing ourselves to just… be is something we have to appreciate more.
And maybe after this pocket of time where my phone is blocked and my curtains are scrunched up, I'll find the will to handle it later.
“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.” - Seneca
Reading! Watching! Sharing!
I borrowed Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didon from Libby after reading this essay she wrote in 1961 On Self-Respect. I've read the first few chapters of The Year of Magical Thinking but could not overcome the sadness I felt for her while reading it. This, though, really made me understand why she is a great writer. I have never heard of her before her passing. And now I see her mentioned as everyone's inspiration.
“To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that details one's failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every screening.
In Search of Smoky Cafés by Lily Dancyger is an essay about being “under the influence” of someone who has inspired you + a mix of travel. Here she understands what Anaïs Nin wrote about Paris.
I realized then that of course the Paris Nin described was the world she had created: it was the people she surrounded herself with and the conversations she had—there had never been a time when the whole city was like that, but all along the Paris (and the New York) that I’d craved was there, hidden, available to those who knew how to look.
After trying out Scrubstack I landed on a Substack by Maggie Mertens and Megan Burbank's Gilmore Women. They are two journalists that discuss everything that's wrong with every episode of Gilmore Girls. If you've been subscribed since last summer you KNOW how this show ate my life up. I loved and hated it. And I've found the voices that can articulate this feeling.
I love What's Wrong with Episode 1: It Sets Expectations Too High, because *clap* it *clap* does.
What’s so infuriating about this episode is that it contains everything that’s good about the universe of Gilmore Girls, enough to make you wonder what might have been had Amy Sherman-Palladino only stuck with what really works about this show — the relationship between Lorelai and Emily, the pace of the dialogue, surly Rory! — and eschewed all the nonsense that clutters up later seasons.
One of my favourite artists is PearFluer on Youtube. Her videos range from relaxing paint making videos (yes, made her own paints from pigments), binding her own sketchbooks, making her own chess set??? I also love interior stuff so ultimately it means that I love her studio. She mainly paints with watercolor, a medium I have hated the most. But after watching her control of the brush and her use of color… Me gusta. Me encanta.
I mean. Just look at this.
For some reason in my brain, I think it was in one of her vlogs? or ig story? that I learned about the Harvard Art Museum's rare pigment collection. This video is a very interesting look on how history is not suspended in time. And that science and art are cool. Their art conservator explains what they use these pigments for. (Spoiler alert: they use the pigments to authenticate and and restore paintings). The Harvard Art Museums also have an audio tour of their collection up on their website.
Have you ever wondered Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? Can you name at the top of your head, five women artists from the 1700? 1800? This is actually an essay I haven't read yet. Though it has inspired Katy Hessel to create The Great Women Artists instagram and substack pages. She is also the author of The Story of Art Without Men, a nod to E.H. Gombrich's The Story of Art, wherein there is only one mention of a woman artist.
I'm reading an EPUB of her book right now and despite all the artists being Western artists, she has down seven+ years of research to uncover Great Women Artists from 1550 to 2020s. An ambitious work, if you ask me. I'm learning a lot of about a lot of Women Artists that I think deserve their proper space in gRAND Museums. I have always felt like Museums like the Louvre and Prado were honestly… boring if not for the three Masters they have. If they had a fraction of these Women there instead of, quite frankly, underwhelming paintings by mEn… Then it would be so much more cooler, representative, and tbh… Interesting.
“My personal favourite is Still Life with a Vase of Flowers, Goblets and Shells, 1612, displaying two highly intricate gilded goblets, a stone vase, shells, a single tulip and a porcelain bowl filled with chains against a dark, dusky backdrop. The viewer’s eye does not focus on the central goblet, but rather follows the elegant diagonal line that leads us to the one glimmering on the far right – where it reveals, worked into the goblet itself, the most extraordinary collection of self-portraits, around ten in total!”
Katy Hessel. “The Story of Art without Men”.
Rewriting The Marcos Years by Sheila S. Coronel. A must read. Need I say more.
The Marcos family’s power also came from violence, from the silencing of dissent and resistance. But it has benefited from decades of myths, lies, folklore, entertainment and propaganda. Ferdinand Sr still looms large in the Filipino imagination – an almost Shakespearean figure.
Gina Apostol's non-fiction writing is really fun to read. Let the Knife Speak: On José Rizal makes me wonder how good of a writer he is as she compared him to authors I love like Jorge Luis Borges and Antonio Machado de Assis.
This essay on our National Hero makes me wonder how powerful the Nationalistic spirit of Rizal's works could be if it were translated to different Philippine languages. It’s also just good motivation to actually pick-up Noli and Fili and read it as an adult.
He wrote his novels in Spanish, but his most expansive correspondence — in two volumes explaining his art, politics, and dreams of his country’s release from its then-colonizer, Spain — was written to a housebound malade imaginaire, an Austrian ethnologist named Ferdinand Blumentritt. Their letters are in German. As a Filipino, I read everything he wrote in translation — which is odd because, as a Filipino, everything he wrote defines who I am.
I hope you enjoyed this newsletter 💌 I have been collecting these links and essays for awhile now so it's time they see the light of day. I also have been really enjoying sharing now three?! newsletters. I just really love being on break, too.
thank you for the curated links!!!! i feel like my sense of culture grew +100
"Spending time in silence is meditative. Spending time looking at nothing but the wall, your coffee table, your shoes haphazardly left by the door allows your mind to truly feel what the word zen means."
i have smth interesting to share about this; that period of silence and emptiness in japanese is called ma (間) which is an important concept in jp art, design, and culture. it's basically that interval between two elements or two actions that's meant to bring calmness and meaning to the things we see and do. when applied to lifestyles, it's really helpful to create an interval between like, going home from work and then doing your chores or waking up in the morning and going to work bc that interval allows space to reflect or recharge. this concept is observable from the way cities are designed to like,,, miyazaki's films to daily communication.
"Sitting by yourself in the morning without scrolling is already something great. Allowing ourselves to just… be is something we have to appreciate more."
a part of me needed to hear those. thanks, Bia. Love the articles and insights you share!